Tonight’s the night. Strasmas II. The Strassurection. Call it what you want, but Stephen Strasburg returns to a major league mound to face the Dodgers. His first game that counts since Tommy John surgery a year and three days ago.
Everyone talks about the physical adjustments after ligament surgery. The velocity often comes back fairly quickly, but the touch and command lags. Often by weeks and months. One thing people don’t talk about is the mental adjustment. There can’t be anything more boring and tedious than injury rehab. Most of it is spent by oneself, working out early mornings at some facility a thousand miles from where the team is playing and a million miles from the mental state a major leaguer would expect to have in the middle of a baseball season.
But it had to have been even more extreme for Strasburg, for he went from the center of the baseball world’s attention to that painful solitude practically overnight. And now his return is more highly anticipated and hyped than just about any similar return I can recall. His physical journey has been as tough as any rehabbing pitcher’s, but his mental journey has to have been much tougher.
So let’s watch tonight to see if he can snap off some of that crazy stuff he showed during those few crazy weeks he captured the nation’s attention in 2010. But let’s also see if we can’t tell if he’s, well, a little crazy from the roller coaster ride.
